


evolutions

by setokaibas



Category: Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: #LetJDRest2017, F/M, Ghost JD, no ship hate pls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-13 18:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10519365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/setokaibas/pseuds/setokaibas
Summary: inspired by a prompt of @jdronica's on tumblr. veronica sawyer can't figure out why her ex-boyfriend isn't out of her skin, after all the efforts she's made to lay his memory to rest in sherwood, ohio.planned to be a multichapter; continuation based on reader response (meaning it won't be continued without feedback). this is my first heathers fic.NOW COMPLETE; writer has no more ideas.





	1. initiation

**Author's Note:**

> ship hate will be deleted. please leave a comment if you can; constructive criticism is appreciated. thank you for reading, and have a blessed day.

“Greetings and salutations.”

The first time Veronica Sawyer sees her ex-boyfriend, it’s six months after he’d spread his arms wide and smiled sadly, six months after she stumbled out of the gym with her face blackened by the soot that was his ashes. She’s making chicken in the new kitchen of the dorm she could barely afford thanks to the scholarship, and the crumbs fall off the filets when the pan clatters to her clean tile floor. It looks sad and pathetic sitting there. Normally the ever-fastidious Veronica would clean up her messes, but her body is frozen in tetany at the fact that he’s _here_ (not burning, not in the ashes on the pressed skirt she hides in the back of the closet away from the person she was and is now).

Her hands shake, but he leans against the end of the counter without a word about that or anything else. Intelligent amber eyes, not too far from how she remembers them, gleamed predictably at her. She watches as he slides a cigarette from his trench coat pocket and lights it with the crappy lighter he always kept on himself. The flame flickers, too much like the burning. She blinks, only to see him blow out smoke from his lips (had they really kissed her thighs?). It’s surreal, but Veronica finally stops scrambling with the reality of his presence to say the only thing that seemed apropos.

“What the fuck, JD?”

His eyes, like a cat, turn to her. The lights flicker above Veronica’s head, the lightbulb flashing despite the fact she swore she’d changed it just a few days ago. He seems to be gulping her down with each gaze, as if he’d never see her again; it seemed like the look on his face when she’d first roused him from sleep and demanded her portion of his soul raw and bloody.

Then, he looks away, takes a drag of his cigarette and lets the smoke flow casually out of his mouth. The words come out sardonic when he finally decides to speak ages later (and she’s still holding the spatula like a weapon, for some reason). His voice is slow and smooth, and flows down her body, making the child in her womb jump.

“Let’s just say the judgment line in the sky is pretty long, Veronica.”

“So what? You came back down to mess around with the Turbo Dog machine? Don’t play with me again, you asshole.”

A smirk curls his lips, the expression looking infuriatingly good on him. It drops seconds later, though, into something unreadable. Veronica decides she preferred the first glimpse she’d gotten.

He stands there, thinking, like he often did when she wasn’t watching. It almost feels like the old days in his car listening to the Doobie Brothers or that time when he shot the radio out too precisely for it not to be premeditated. Veronica looks around—where was the gun?—and drops her hand nervously to her belly. She strokes the flesh underneath, trying to calm herself down, and JD looks at her hand before letting his sight flicker back to her face. He puts out his cigarette with his hand, and Veronica just looks at him, absorbing the butterfly flaps in her stomach that she still gets, _damn it, why_?

Suddenly, he speaks.

“I’m sorry, darling.”

Then he turns around the corner to the laundry room, and she goes after him, the pounding beat of desire in her head reaching out for him despite it all. But—the trench coat she had wished would be waiting for her was gone.

She cries that day, slowly and quietly, over the chicken as she salvages the breading on the outside. It looks awful, but not for a lack of trying. Through the tears, she supposes it’s good enough for her purposes.

(She doesn’t burn it, though, like she always seemed to do- maybe it was his influence.)


	2. infancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> inspired by a prompt of @jdronica's on tumblr. veronica sawyer can't figure out why her ex-boyfriend isn't out of her skin, after all the efforts she's made to lay his memory to rest in sherwood, ohio.  
> planned to be a multichapter; continuation based on reader response (meaning it won't be continued without feedback). this is my first heathers fic.  
> CHAPTER II: His fingerprints are all over Rose Sawyer, and imprint even deeper when JD finally decides to sink his claws into their life again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for subscribing and giving kudos to this story. i greatly appreciate every comment that comes my way. please leave a comment to tell me what you would like to see next; blessings to you all.

The second time Veronica Sawyer sees her ex-boyfriend (now mate, she thinks, however fuzzy the distinction has become), it’s three months after she spent twelve hours in pain bearing the fruit of their labors. It was just as bloody as Kurt’s head in her hands, and accompanied with the wails of the machines that sounded so terribly like JD’s (suicide?), glowing numbers shrieking shrilly against her tired body. She’s getting ready to fill their child’s belly again, as the small girl seemed to be hungry every time Veronica thought of even the smallest personal luxury. The bottle of formula warms in the microwave, lazily circling, and the light within glows indolently. The hue is different every time Veronica’s sapphire eyes blink, and she wonders if the bulb’s about to pop. Rather that, she thinks, than the sanity she’s barely maintaining as the school work piles up and the test scores barely reach perfection.

The beep startles her out of thought into the present, and she stretches on tiptoes for the food, grabbing it without much ceremony. The tile swims before her eyes as Veronica shuffles to the kitchen, weight of the world shifting his cigarette in his teeth and laughing at it all. Her other hand idly straightens the metal decoration next to the door of her makeshift motherhood before it stills. The stillness of her curled fist gave way to its signature tremble, and she smells it.

The scent of tobacco-- burned, but somehow fragrant, something you could bury your nose into and forget that anything but the hands on your back and the teeth on your neck existed.

Her stomach senses him before anything else, and she abruptly opens the door. It creaks loudly, and a soft wail begins from a few paces in front of her. It is only then that she meets his eyes, and then looks away from the fresh hell preserved in their liquid amber. Veronica looks at her child, how she is cradled in soft blankets within JD’s somehow solid arms, how the sapphire eyes which once matched his look up and recognize her _father._

Veronica’s voice doesn’t shake this time when she tries to speak, and she can hear Heather Chandler snarking in her memory. She pushes the ghost aside in favor of the soul in front of her, and it feels like acid rising in her throat.

“What are you doing here, JD?”

He doesn’t look at her, only rocks their child gently in the crook of his blackened arms. The response she receives is quiet, reverent, like the times she tried to go to church but could never come back to the same one again.

“What’s her name, Ronnie?”

“Rose,” she says reluctantly. And, then- “Don’t call me Ronnie, _JD_.”

(Not _Jason_ , like the little smiling boy she’d dug up in one of his trashed albums after his pseudo-funeral. It was too happy, not covered enough in blood.)

“Okay, baby. If it makes you happy, I won’t.” The voice comes out in resignation, and she sees him flicker and fade, just a bit. She should want him to leave them forever, but then her baby girl coos and JD _smiles_.

It looks pasted onto him from the childhood photo she had tucked away somewhere in a drawer, but it’s genuine and warm and fills the gaping hole in her heart better than the alcohol ever did. The hatred spits and hisses, but softness fills her, and her face relaxes halfway. Veronica takes a tentative step forward, and then feels JD at her side. Warm, as if he was still alive to be there and feed his daughter the barely-warm formula resting in the hand she’s not using to reach out and touch his hair.

It’s as fine as she remembers, even slightly dusted with ash, and it slips feather-light through her grasp. He doesn’t regard her touch for a few seconds, but eventually he pauses humming to his daughter to gaze at her. There’s an unspoken question there, which quietly slips away as he turns towards her, Rose held out to her carefully as one would handle a treasured photo. Something bearish in her is glad to take a now-suckling Rose in one arm and his hand, briefly, in another. The atmosphere of the room isn’t suffocating anymore-- it’s distant, but friendly, like the smile JD gives as he ducks into the bathroom.

“Gotta go, dear. Don’t want to upset good ole St. Dymphna. They watch us crazies real closely.”

For the first time in forever, she wishes he wouldn’t leave again.


End file.
